Critical Edition of Nashville Opera’s ‘Cinderella’ is, Well, Critical

There are so many aspects to a professional opera production, among them the costumes, sets, props, lights, orchestra and, of course, the singers. But it all begins with what’s on the printed page.

The edition of an opera score chosen for a particular presentation colors that production. And for Nashville Opera’s Cinderella (original Italian title La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo, which loosely translates as Cinderella, or the Triumph of Goodness), Artistic Director John Hoomes has a back-to-basics approach to Gioachino Rossini’s 1817 comic masterpiece.

“We’re using the Pesaro (the town in Italy where Rossini was born) critical edition, edited by Philip Gossett and Alberto Zedda and their team of musicologists,” Hoomes says, adding that the edition “blew the lid off the Rossini world” when it was released several years ago.

“Prior to this, the editions everyone used for the Rossini comedies were highly edited and re-orchestrated, to make the score sound more romantic and warm. Rossini originally composed for what he could get in the theaters where the shows were done,” he explains. “Apparently there were some great wind and piccolo players in Naples, thus the two wailing piccolos up high in the Act I finales of all three shows he wrote there.

“Rossini used a more open and light voicing of the chords, with wide spacing and transparent almost hollow sounds. The German editors in the mid-1800s re-orchestrated a lot of the wind writing to warm up the chords and make the score sound more romantic and Germanic.”

That’s not the case for this version, which opens Friday in Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Polk Theater with mezzo-soprano Leah Wool in the title role and tenor Javier Abreu as the dashing prince Don Ramiro (both, incidentally, are making their Nashville Opera debuts). “The parts we’re using have been corrected to Rossini’s original orchestration,” says Hoomes, who directs with Dean Williamson conducting the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. “Of special note is that there is no percussion or timpani in Cenerentola. In (other) editions editors added percussion and timpani thinking Rossini forgot something!

“The orchestral parts we are using also have many of Rossini’s original phrasing and articulation marks, which are more ‘period’ and difficult to do. And the vocal parts in this critical edition reflect Rossini’s original cadenzas and ornaments. We are also adding additional ornaments and variations, as the singers in Rossini’s time would have done. And the vocal lines have been corrected to fix all of the pitch, rhythm and text errors propagated in (other) editions.”

In opera and theater it’s often true that what’s fun for artists is fun for audiences. If recent rehearsals are any indication, this atypically happy opera should be a delight at TPAC, according to Hoomes. “We’re having a great deal of fun putting the show together, which is a welcome change over the sometime somber mood a piece like Tosca can toss over the rehearsal hall,” he adds. “I actually am a great Rossini fan; I just don’t have a chance to direct it much. But wow, when a Rossini opera gets up and running, there is really nothing like it. And who am I to second guess Bugs Bunny (who had fun with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in the classic 1950 Looney Tunes short The Rabbit of Seville)?”

Rossini’s “Cinderella” plays 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Jan. 27 and 7 p.m. Jan. 29 in the Polk Theater at Tennessee Performing Arts Center (505 Deaderick St.). Sung in Italian with projected English translations; running time two hours, 20 minutes (two acts with one 20-minute intermission). Pre-performance “Opera Insights” discussions begin one hour earlier. Hoomes and two singers will take part in “InsideOUT of the Lunch Box: Evolution of the Fairy Tale” at noon Thursday in Polk Theater. That event is free – there will be a boxed lunch served to first 300 people arriving after 11:30 a.m. – but reservations are required by emailing tpac@vanderbilt.edu or calling (615) 322-8585. Tickets ($26-$102.50, plus the opera’s Pay-What-You-Can option) for the shows are now available by calling Nashville Opera at (615) 832-5242, the TPAC Box Office at (615) 782-4040, or online at www.nashvilleopera.org.

Related

Evans Donnell is the chief theater, film and opera critic as well as co-founder of ArtsNash. He wrote reviews and features about theater, opera and classical music for The Tennessean from 2002 to 2011. He was the theater, film and opera critic for ArtNowNashville.com from 2011 to 2012. Donnell has also contributed to The Sondheim Review, Back Stage, The City Paper (Nashville), the Nashville Banner, The (Bowling Green, Ky.) Daily News and several other publications since beginning his professional journalism career in 1985 with The Lebanon (Tenn.) Democrat. He was selected as a fellow for the 2004 National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and for National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) arts journalism institutes for theater and musical theater at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in 2006 and classical music and opera at the Columbia University School of Journalism in 2009. He has also been an actor (member of Actors Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA), founding and running AthensSouth Theatre from 1996 to 2001 and appearing in Milos Forman's "The People vs Larry Flynt" among other credits. Donnell is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association (www.americantheatrecritics.org).

NowPlayingNashville.com Calendar

Random Stories From the Archives

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in England’s Stratford-upon-Avon has selected the Nashville Shakespeare Festival as one of only 14 theater companies in North America to be featured in Shakespeare on the Road, a prestigious documentary and book. The official announcement was made Saturday at the Nashville Public Library downtown. Mayor Karl Dean joined Artistic Director Denice Hicks in making […]

“‘When younger…I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. My feelings are profound, but I possessed a coolness of judgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of the worth of my nature supported me when others would have been oppressed, for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those talents […]

Bob Fosse is the unforgettable reason for one of the Top 10 nights I’ve spent in a theater. In terms of audience response to him, I’m not certain I’ve ever experienced anything to beat it. The occasion was the 1963 City Center revival of Pal Joey with Fosse in the title role, of course, supported by mink-wrapped Viveca […]

There’s something incongruous about the location of Dance Theatre of Tennessee’s headquarters. This uptown classical ballet company is situated in a decidedly downtown Donelson strip mall, nestled alongside a thrift store, a bowling alley and a bartending school. It seems like an odd place to find a high-arts organization. Yet it’s arguably the perfect spot […]

There’s nothing like a little voodoo mysticism to kick off a music season. That’s exactly what Live on the Green plans to do this September, when it launches its fourth annual series with a performance by legendary New Orleans bluesman Dr. John. “Dr. John has been a part of music history for more than four […]

Rama Burshtein’s beautiful and intimate Fill the Void has a very specific setting – the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community of Tel Aviv – but its story is a universal one about the struggle between one’s personal desires and the obligations one may feel to the family they love. True, the choice 18-year-old eighteen-year-old Shira (Hadas […]

Actors Bridge Ensemble will present the world premiere of Outside Paradise by Founding Artistic Director Bill Feehely and the ABE supported by a Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission Creation Grant, according to a news release. The show runs Nov. 9-18 at Belmont’s Black Box Theater (1575 Compton Ave. just off Belmont Blvd.) as the company’s annual collaboration […]

Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is a kind of sonic Grand Canyon: It’s a breathtaking wonder, a marvel of musical emotion that can only be fully appreciated in person. No recording, no YouTube video can ever do it justice. Mahler’s sprawling, 85-minute orchestral essay is anchoring the Nashville Symphony Orchestra’s program this weekend at the Schermerhorn […]

British violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved and his friend, composer Michael Alec Rose, are always full of surprises. The two were at the Blair School of Music’s Turner Recital Hall on Thursday evening for a Nightcap Series performance. Naturally, Sheppard Skærved went immediately off script, while Rose defied expectations. At the outset, Sheppard Skærved informed us that […]

The Nashville Symphony Orchestra has been on something of a Roberto Sierra kick of late. Last April, the NSO under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero recorded two of the composer’s works – Fandangos and Sinfonia No. 4 – for future release on the Naxos label. Guerrero and the orchestra even played the Sinfonia’s finale as […]

While it’s based on the pan-cultural fairy tale of Cinderella, Nashville Stagecraft’s adaptation of the ancient tale is a far cry from the classic 1950 Disney animated film version. Cindy & Ella, premiering Friday at the 4th Story Theater, follows three women coping with life in an isolated Oklahoma farming community at the height of the Dust Bowl. […]

Congratulations are apparently in order once again for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Giancarlo Guerrero. The orchestra announced on Wednesday afternoon that it has extended Guerrero’s contract through the 2020 season. The contract will make Guerrero’s directorship the second longest in NSO history, after concert hall namesake Kenneth Schermerhorn, who served from […]

Confusion. Grace. Hope. They’re all implied in the title of Mumford and Sons’ sophomore album. Babel was much anticipated. Topping the United States billboard charts, the album was especially popular among college students. The band has led a blended folk-rock style of music into the mainstream, and comparisons to their first album are inevitable. Overall, […]

The folks at Walt Disney Studios are counting on the heartwarming elements of The Odd Life of Timothy Green to keep the turnstiles moving. To a certain extent that’s a good plan. Writer/Director Peter Hedges (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, About a Boy, Pieces of April, Dan in Real Life) has fashioned a fantasy about a […]

“What do you see?” That question comes from the mouth of painter Mark Rothko as John Logan’s play Red begins. It spurs the arguments – and revealing answers – that follow in the vivid portrait of art and life that Blackbird Theater produces. Yes, there is a powerful intellectual tussle going on in this multi-awarding work, […]

Renowned composer Philip Glass, Peter Brook’s theater troupe and Wayne McGregor’s dance company are among those visiting OZ Nashville during its inaugural season, OZ leaders announced today at a ribbon-cutting launch party attended by a capacity crowd. Their first series of performances, which will run Feb. 13 – June 21, will introduce audiences to OZ’s flexible and […]

Theater, dance, music, puppetry, aerial arts, juggling, circus arts, spoken word, poetry, performance art and more will feature in the Sideshow Fringe Festival that starts today and runs through Sunday. Some of the eclectic offerings include the Aerial Fabricators presenting Think Air Collective; Wearing High Heels in a Flip-Flop World by Patricia Leonard; El Circo […]

The music of German composer Richard Wagner and French composer Maurice Ravel would seem to go together like a mixture of sauerkraut and crème brûlée. Wagner’s heavy Teutonic music dramas have little in common with Ravel’s elegantly refined, classically proportioned works. And never mind that most French composers of Ravel’s generation despised Wagner and his […]

Nashville’s city-wide celebration of the arts will get an early start this fall, thanks to Dance Theatre of Tennessee. DTT Will open its 2013-14 season with an expanded version of its “Ballet in the Park” series, this time performing for two weekends instead of just one. “Some people were disappointed last year because we performed […]

Tickets for Nashville playwright Jim Reyland’s Stand go on sale Friday at www.ticketsnashville.com. The new play is directed by David Compton and stars Barry Scott and Chip Arnold. All 36 performances will raise funds to benefit Room In The Inn. The play runs for 12 consecutive weekends beginning Aug. 24. All general admission tickets are $15 […]